ThinkProgess has documented how the private health insurance industry is waging a duplicitous, “two-faced” campaign to kill health reform. Because the industry understands that the public views it in a largely negative light, the industry presents itself as proactively working hand-in-hand with legislators to produce reform. However, behind the scenes, the industry is coordinating a massive effort to kill all reform — employing attacks from front groups, allied politicians, think tanks, lobbyists, and right-wing media.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, which is a lobbying group representing 39 independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans, is also engaged in this two-faced campaign. Like most of industry, the BCBS Association says it fully supports the concept of health reform, but continually demands drastic changes to the bills in Congress. Some have begun to question the BCBS Association’s claim of support given its new study attacking reform legislation in the Senate. The criticism of BCBS is bolstered by a new revelation that BCBS Association lobbyists are helping to orchestrate a right-wing movement to invalidate all of health reform.

Yesterday, the BCBS Association released yet another industry-sponsored study to distort health reform and falsely claim that premiums will skyrocket because of the legislation. However, the nonpartisan CBO reported earlier this week that under the Senate health reform bill, “most Americans would pay the same or less in premiums.” A New York Times editorial yesterday criticized BCBS Association’s study, and noted correctly that it is yet another example of the private insurance industry doing whatever it can to frighten Americans.

But while the study certainly damages BCBS’ credibility, BCBS is involved in another anti-health reform ploy that they do not bother to promote on the BCBS website. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), founded in 1973 by conservative activist Paul Weyrich, is a DC-based front group which helps state lawmakers craft corporate-friendly legislation. As the Atlantic has noted, ALEC developed template health care “states’ rights,” legislation to declare aspects of health reform unconstitutional. ALEC has promoted this “tenther” legislation using its network of mostly far right Republican state lawmakers. The bills, which have been adopted in some form in 24 states so far, aim to invalidate federal regulations of health insurance, the public option and the individual mandate using the Tenther Amendment.

According to the ALEC website, the resolution was developed by a three member task force of industry representatives. One of the of the members is Joan Gardner, who is executive director of state services with the BCBS Association’s Office of Policy and Representation. In an interview with ThinkProgress, Christie Herrera, the director of ALEC’s health task force, confirmed that Gardner played a pivotal role in crafting this anti-health reform states’ rights initiative. Herrera told us that Gardner’s unique position at the BCBS Association brought “great knowledge” to the issue, and that Gardner voted to press forward with the campaign.

Part of the reason the BCBS Association has claimed that it opposes the reform bill in its current form is because of what it perceives as a weak individual mandate. However, the BCBS Association-supported ALEC campaign depicts the very notion of an individual mandate as “anti-freedom.” So either way the Senate acts, BCBS will be able to trash the bill and try to kill reform.

Private insurers have already been caught using a stealth lobbying firm to send employees to rowdy town halls (and radical tea party events), sharing lobbyists with slash-and-burn anti-health reform attack groups, and paying a number of conservative pundits who regularly appear in major media outlets to slam health reform. Now that it is clear that BCBS helped write the script for the radical tenther movement, any claim that the industry supports reform must be viewed with heightened skepticism.

Yesterday, the Department of Labor reported that the unemployment rate dropped to 10 percent in November, and the U.S. economy lost a much lower than expected 11,000 jobs last month, which is the fewest since the recession began in December 2007. The wider measure of underemployment also fell to 17.2 percent, from 17.5 percent.

Everyone (aside from the Republican National Committee, which still used the new numbers to bash the Obama administration) seems to be looking at the report with cautious optimism. But CNBC’s Trish Regan concluded that the report means the government should cancel the rest of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e. the stimulus package) because we are now on “the road to recovery”:

The first thing that went through my head was, number one, wow! I mean, it was a tremendous surprise to, I think, everyone, certainly here at the New York Stock Exchange, one of the reasons the market’s doing so well this morning. But the second thing was, do we really need more stimulus given that we seem to be very much now on the road to recovery?…Why spend any more money? We haven’t spent all the stimulus money thus far, why not maybe hang onto that?

Watch it:

While the jobs report is certainly encouraging, I wouldn’t be celebrating a recovery just yet. 7 million jobs have still been lost in this recession, while “the typical unemployed worker has been searching for work for 20.1 weeks, and the share of the unemployed who have been out of work and searching for a job for at least six months rose to a record high of 38.3 percent.” Its particularly foolhardy to suggest canceling the stimulus on the same week that the Congressional Budget Office found that it has created or saved 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs, with plenty of punch still to come.

We’re definitely not out of the woods, which is why it’s encouraging that Democrats in Congress are working to craft a new jobs package. “I think we’re at a moment now where we’re beginning to see the positive benefits of the stimulus, but if we take our foot off the accelerator, we could relapse into a very, very slow recovery,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) yesterday.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Democrats are looking at a $170 billion effort — funded at least in part by TARP money that has been repaid to Treasury by banks — inclusive of $100 billion in safety net provisions and $70 billion in infrastructure investments and aid to states.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, will lay out his own vision for a jobs bill on Tuesday, and Congress isn’t expected to unveil its final legislation until after Obama’s speech. According to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Obama is likely to endorse using TARP funds for the jobs bill. Republicans, meanwhile, are opposed, with House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) calling it “the worst idea I’ve ever heard of.”

In recent weeks, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been stepping up its campaign against health care reform, running ads in seven states fear-mongering that the public option will increase individual costs and threaten the system of employer-sponsored coverage. It has even been “collecting money to finance an economic study that could be used to portray the legislation as a job killer and threat to the nation’s economy.”

But on Thursday, Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, came out and endorsed the Senate health care legislation. CEO Brian Roberts sent a letter to President Obama saying that the “enactment of comprehensive health care reform legislation is, in my judgment, critical to putting this country on a path of sustained growth and prosperity.”

Later that day, a small group of bloggers met with Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen, who discussed how important the company believes health care reform is to reinvigorating the economy. A Comcast spokesperson confirmed to ThinkProgress that the company is an annual contributor to the Chamber, but not a member of the board of directors. It is also active on a number of working groups, such as Technology and Regulatory Affairs, and a supporter of a recent broadband study commissioned by the Chamber. At the meeting, Cohen made a specific point of noting that Comcast is not involved in the Chamber’s controversial anti-climate change legislation lobbying.

However, when we asked Cohen about what the Chamber is doing on health care, he said that Comcast clearly disagrees. But Cohen gave no indication that the company was thinking of discontinuing its dues, stating that the members and national organization are bound to have disagreements:

We’re entitled to have our own opinion, and I think it’s impossible for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to only take positions that 100 percent of its members agree with 100 percent of the time. … But we clearly don’t agree on health care. There may be other things we agree on, but on health care, we clearly don’t agree. [...]

You just can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the very good. Nobody wrote that you have to solve this problem in one piece of legislation at one time.

The Chamber of Commerce did not respond to ThinkProgress’ requests for comment.